BIOS changes boot device priority on its own

[Rebel1]

Sometime when I boot, I get this message at the end of the POST:
NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot.

My system has two hard drives: a new 1 TB SATA as the primary drive that
I boot from, and an 500 MB IDE drive. When I get the above message, I
find that the BIOS has changed priority of boot drives so Windows tries
booting from the IDE drive, and if it can't find the files it needs it
doesn't go on to check if the other drive has them.

The cure is simple: just change the BIOS settings back so the SATA drive
is first in line.

I've been using the MOBO for years without this problem. It just started
when I installed the SATA drive a few weeks ago. Most of the time,
booting goes without any problems. Maybe once in 20 times, I'll get the
error message.

Any ideas what's happening in the BIOS to change drive priority?

Thanks,

R1

 

[Rodney Pont]

Any ideas what's happening in the BIOS to change drive priority?

I'd change the battery as a first step.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Sometime when I boot, I get this message at the end of the POST:
NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot.

My system has two hard drives: a new 1 TB SATA as the primary drive that
I boot from, and an 500 MB IDE drive. When I get the above message, I
find that the BIOS has changed priority of boot drives so Windows tries
booting from the IDE drive, and if it can't find the files it needs it
doesn't go on to check if the other drive has them.

The cure is simple: just change the BIOS settings back so the SATA drive
is first in line.

I've been using the MOBO for years without this problem. It just started
when I installed the SATA drive a few weeks ago. Most of the time,
booting goes without any problems. Maybe once in 20 times, I'll get the
error message.

Any ideas what's happening in the BIOS to change drive priority?

Do you also have an external USB hard drive that you attach to this
machine from time to time? I find that when a USB drive is sometimes
attached, the entire drive booting order gets changed, and I have to go
back to BIOS to reorder them again.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Jan Alter]

Do you also have an external USB hard drive that you attach to this
machine from time to time? I find that when a USB drive is sometimes
attached, the entire drive booting order gets changed, and I have to go
back to BIOS to reorder them again.

Yousuf Khan

Possibly a newer bios version addresses the problem?

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Possibly a newer bios version addresses the problem?

In my case, I already have the very latest BIOS installed, so there's no
solution for me, but the OP might want to check into seeing if he has
the latest one too.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Flasherly]

Sometime when I boot, I get this message at the end of the POST:
NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot.

My system has two hard drives: a new 1 TB SATA as the primary drive that
I boot from, and an 500 MB IDE drive. When I get the above message, I
find that the BIOS has changed priority of boot drives so Windows tries
booting from the IDE drive, and if it can't find the files it needs it
doesn't go on to check if the other drive has them.

The cure is simple: just change the BIOS settings back so the SATA drive
is first in line.

I've been using the MOBO for years without this problem. It just started
when I installed the SATA drive a few weeks ago. Most of the time,
booting goes without any problems. Maybe once in 20 times, I'll get the
error message.

Any ideas what's happening in the BIOS to change drive priority?

Thanks,

R1

Interaction on and between boot setup. I effectively get the same
thing if I leave a USB stick in before repowering -- it'll throw off
the BIOS defined sequence. The MB usually approaches AWARD or another
BIOS chip provider and contracts for a BIOS for support on a
combination features within specification they've designed for selling
pretty boxed paper surrounding the total MB package. I've seen AWARD
BIOS provisions for establishing the priority of HDs as either Boot
1st: a)SATA or b)PATA. Not a problem to functional ends, what you got,
as long as it does what it does except on occasional Blue Moons.

NTLDR is sort of generic anyway for a boot loader, past the boot
strap, residing on a certain address or location to the HD, where the
BIOS posts that message when unable to load a valid sequence. If GRUB
or a boot arbitrator were there it would be redirected to whatever
partitions are software interpreted and defined.

There once was a point when Microsoft got its hands burnt by the
courts for interfering unduly in the backstage of hardware design
implementations. If a *NIX or DOS setup HD, then the NT of Microsoft
wouldn't be applicable to posting that "hard" message, even though one
is expected to know it effectively means as much the same thing.

 

[Michael Black]

Do you also have an external USB hard drive that you attach to this machine
from time to time? I find that when a USB drive is sometimes attached, the
entire drive booting order gets changed, and I have to go back to BIOS to
reorder them again.

It's more like some options don't appear if they aren't needed. I
remember with my netbook, I was surprised I couldn't boot from a USB flash
drive. But then later I had one plugged in, and I could. The option
didn't appear until the drive was there.

Michael

 

[Paul]

Sometime when I boot, I get this message at the end of the POST:
NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot.

My system has two hard drives: a new 1 TB SATA as the primary drive that
I boot from, and an 500 MB IDE drive. When I get the above message, I
find that the BIOS has changed priority of boot drives so Windows tries
booting from the IDE drive, and if it can't find the files it needs it
doesn't go on to check if the other drive has them.

The cure is simple: just change the BIOS settings back so the SATA drive
is first in line.

I've been using the MOBO for years without this problem. It just started
when I installed the SATA drive a few weeks ago. Most of the time,
booting goes without any problems. Maybe once in 20 times, I'll get the
error message.

Any ideas what's happening in the BIOS to change drive priority?

Thanks,

R1

It's the nature of the design of the BIOS.

There don't appear to be good ways of tracking which drive is which,
and storing the information in the 256 byte CMOS area.

When you add drives to a computer, it upsets the record of
which drive is which.

My results with this issue, vary from computer to computer. Some
BIOS are fairly good at continuing to select the correct drive.
Especially when drives are *removed*, the BIOS might still select
the correct drive from the remaining drives. But adding drives
to the computer, that's the real test for the BIOS design.

Upgrading the BIOS won't help. The behavior is not considered
a bug, so they won't "fix it". The behavior is determined by
Award/AMI/Phoenix, not by the motherboard company. If you had
an Asus and MSI motherboard, and both had Award BIOS, they might
behave the same way with regard to boot selection behavior.

On modern computers, the best solution is pressing F8 or F11 and
using the "popup boot menu". The popup boot menu, doesn't exist on
older computers. My old 440BX based computer wouldn't have one.
My three most recent computers have popup boot (on the laptop,
there is only a one second wide window, to press the right key!).
You simply select the drive from there, and off you go.

This is an example of what such an option looks like, after you
press the appropriate key while the BIOS is doing POST. Whether
it's F8 or F11 or some other key, depends on the brand of device.
My Asus is F8, my Asrock is F11, the Laptop might be F2. Hard
drives, USB keys, and optical drives will be listed, and the optical
drive is listed even if no media is present. In fact, the menu is
presented, even if a drive has no Active boot flag set. No attempt
is made to probe the disk in advance. And, while the menu is present,
you can even pull out your USB key (which is yet another reason I use
this menu). Just don't try to boot from the USB key you just pulled out
When the menu settles, you can even open the CDROM tray, put
a boot CD in the tray, close the drawer, and select that
optical drive from the popup boot menu. Very convenient stuff.

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19127-01/ultra27.ws/820-6772/images/7-2-Boot-Device-Network-Menu.gif

The only time popup style isn't convenient, is when you have computers
which you expect to automatically reboot after a power failure. Or,
you do software updates at night, and force computers to reboot.
Relying on popup then, is a mistake, and then you have to go into
the main BIOS setup screens, and set things correctly so the
default boot device is selected. But for *attended* operation,
popup boot is great.

Paul

 

[Strobe]

Sometime when I boot, I get this message at the end of the POST:
NTLDR is missing. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot.

My system has two hard drives: a new 1 TB SATA as the primary drive that
I boot from, and an 500 MB IDE drive. When I get the above message, I
find that the BIOS has changed priority of boot drives so Windows tries
booting from the IDE drive, and if it can't find the files it needs it
doesn't go on to check if the other drive has them.

The cure is simple: just change the BIOS settings back so the SATA drive
is first in line.

I've been using the MOBO for years without this problem. It just started
when I installed the SATA drive a few weeks ago. Most of the time,
booting goes without any problems. Maybe once in 20 times, I'll get the
error message.

Any ideas what's happening in the BIOS to change drive priority?

Maybe the new drive sometimes fails to spin up in time, or has a slightly dodgy
cable or connector. Most BIOS will automatically boot from the next drive if
the first choice fails to respond.
Does your BIOS helpfully make the 'only available drive' the default, I wonder?

I recommend watching the drive detection messages during boot and see if
anything odd is happening.

As it did in the beginning, pulling all the cables and reseating them can
_still_ work wonders - especially since some sata connectors make
nowhere near as positive a connection as the old IDE sockets do.

 

[Rebel1]

(Sorry if this was already posted. Something screwy with the time in my
computer after I removed CMOS battery to check it and reinserted it.)


As several suggested, I reseated the SATA connectors and checked and
reseated the CMOS battery, which measured 3.3 volts.

I use the Del key to enter the BIOS setup. Then I can chose from several
options similar in their white on blue appearance in Paul's link to the
oracle image.

At boot, I always have the receiver for my wireless mouse plugged into a
USB port.

The MOBO is an Asus M3A76-CM. The BIOS is American Megatrends, with the
system BIOS dated 5/19/09 and the video BIOS dated 7/10/08. Looking for
updates on the AMI support page, I'm directed to something called
esupport.com. There, you download a program that checks all the BIOSs in
you system and determines which are out of date. It stated that my mobo
BIOS is out of date (along with lots of others), but the only way to get
the updated BIOS from them was by buying a $30 or so program. It seems
that AMI can't be bothered offering free updates.

However, Asus does offer a free BIOS update to 10/22/2010. I flashed it
and the system BIOS date is now 9/15/2010; there was no change to the
video BIOS date. So now it's a matter of just waiting to see if wiggling
the cables, reseating the battery and updating the BIOS makes a difference.

Thanks to all for your comments.

R1

 

[Flasherly]

It stated that my mobo
BIOS is out of date (along with lots of others), but the only way to get
the updated BIOS from them was by buying a $30 or so program. It seems
that AMI can't be bothered offering free updates.

Reminds me of USRobotics before somebody picked and bought them out of
their misery.

Always go to a representative of and responsible to the actual MB,
though. If you're going directly to AMI, they're out of the loop at
that point, a once back-end contractor _under_ ASUS, when _providing_
a BIOS chip for model motherboard specifications ASUS delivered to
AMI, contracted for, within extant listings for viable products they
then assume.

If pulling that sort of nonsense, AMI basically is assuming a
representative role within ASUS's jurisdiction, unauthorized end
support, effectively with their hands held out begging or outright
stealing. Probably a nice business law term for it, which happens all
the time as long as it isn't affecting other businesses, their ends or
operations from a lawsuit in determining precedence.